Sotheby’s to Auction Masterworks from Leonard Lauder, Pritzker Collections

Sotheby’s to Auction Masterworks from Leonard Lauder, Pritzker Collections

International auction house Sotheby’s has secured a major consignment of fifty-five works from the collection of cosmetics magnate Leonard Lauder, who died this past summer at the age of ninety-two. The trove, worth roughly $400 million, will go on the block in New York this November, according to theNew York Times, which broke the news. Among the starry works are Gustav Klimt’s 1914–16Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer. One of only two full-length portraits by the Austrian Symbolist still residing in a private collection, the canvas is expected to fetch upward of $150 million. A pair of Klimt landscapes—the 1908Blooming Meadowand the 1917Forest Slope in Unterach—are expected to command over $80 million and more than $70 million, respectively.

Also included in the assembly are a half dozen bronze sculptures by Henri Matisse together worth an estimated $30 million; a ca. 1901–1903 Edvard Munch painting believed to be worth more than $20 million; andThe Garden, a 1964 canvas by Agnes Martin valued at over $10 million.

Sotheby’s additionally scored a group of important nineteenth- and twentieth-century works from the collection of Chicago collectors Jay and Cindy Pritzker, Artnet News reports. Valued at a collective $120 million and including a $40 million Van Gogh—the 1887 Romans Parisiens (Les Livres jaunes)—as well as works by Max Beckmann, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Joan Miró, the assembly will also be on offer at the Sotheby’s November sales in New York, which will take place at the auction house’s new headquarters in the storied Breuer Building, the former longtime home of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

News of Sotheby’s success in snaring both collections arrives in the wake of The Guardian’s September 11 report that the business more than doubled its losses last year, ending 2024 down $248 million compared to the $106 million it was out the previous year. The auction house earlier this month announced a partnership with art fair Independent.